Daily Archives: December 18, 2008

Being exciting is easy. you simply have to do exciting things. that’s all. people are attracted to exciting things and exciting people. Being exciting means you don’t have to work so hard to meet new people.

celebrities are exciting. if you’ve ever seen a celebrity, you know what i mean. the actor peter o’toole once knocked on the door of my home in Ireland when i was a teenager. i nearly died of shock. of excitement. so the ideal then would be for your brand to be exciting. there are two routes to this: one is to create an exciting product. have you ever used a FLIP video camera? i have. now that’s an exciting product. but chances are your product might not be one of those ideas. therefore the things you do have to create excitement. your packaging, your advertising, the things that are in your control that you can make exciting. and of course not everything will create a tsunami of excitement every time. but if being exciting is not a consistent and explicit goal every time and at every opportunity, it will NEVER happen to your brand.

you know all those stories of famous actors and models who were “accidentally discovered” when they were “dragged along” to auditions by friends? never happened. complete horseshit. it takes a will of steel to succeed in the hyper-competitive entertainment industry. everybody who gets the spotlight fought hard to get it. usually by being exciting in some way.

If being exciting is a consistent goal, when lightning finally does strike, and people are genuinely excited about your brand, your reaction won’t be: “Oh my god, how did this happen?”. It will be “Thank god. It finally happened!”.

Like this:

not every medium is suited to advertising. and anyone who has any experience of actually * trying to harness the internet for advertising purposes knows that while it has created exciting new opportunities, it does not rely on advertising for its existence.

and anyone who has worked in the traditional media knows that, creatively, not all media are equal. TV for example is a much better medium than radio. you can show and demonstrate things. you can create exciting little films.

so while facebook attracts a huge crowd, there isn’t much opportunity to create a meaningful brand experience. how many of banner ads on facebook have you clicked on? exactly. does anyone get excited about the prospect of creating a banner ad for facebook? exactly.

now we are not ruling out someone potentially conquering the world via a facebook app or banner ad, and ideally it would be us! but we aren’t holding our breath for it.

Blogroll

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Ever since he’s retired, John Hegarty has really been letting adland have it with both barrels and calling bullshit on an industry that is even more awash with bullshit than it ever has been. And that’s saying something. Adland’s decade-long … Continue reading →